


Wide Awake

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Era, Consent Unclear, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Multi, Non-Consensual, Sexual Shaming, Tears, kink bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1683368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She calls herself Milady now, and is known by her deeds. She prefers to work at night, sleeps little and eats less, sometimes wondering what sustains her. Rage, perhaps; the wild, feline anger that still rises in her gorge at the slightest trigger, that she wrestles into ruthlessness, effectiveness, the roar of a storm made a beam of piercing light.</p><p>She is no longer a woman at all but a weapon, and she will turn her blade on her husband in time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wide Awake

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: Some of the sex acts referenced and depicted in this fic are implied to be **non-consensual**. The fic also includes sexual shaming of same-sex desires (again implied non-consensual), and depiction of an abusive relationship. One brief reference to prostitution.
> 
> Set between Episodes 1x09 and 1x10.
> 
> Kink Bingo fill: tears.
> 
> Unwittingly prompted by a throwaway Tumblr comment from [pristineungift](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pristineungift/) about a Athos/d'Artagnan/Milady pairing – though this is probably not what she had in mind...

When the Comtesse de la Fère was put to death, the woman that was left fell back into her former trade as naturally as breathing, sinking into the shadows of the capital as seamlessly as if she'd never left them.

As if she'd not given two years of her life to an improbable dream.

When you're left with nothing you start again, in whatever way lies open. You rebuild yourself, stone by stone, step by step. You survive.

Her credit was little enough at the start, but it was enough to work with; and she's come a long way since then.

She calls herself Milady now, and is known by her deeds. She prefers to work at night, sleeps little and eats less, sometimes wondering what sustains her. Rage, perhaps; the wild, feline anger that still rises in her gorge at the slightest trigger, that she wrestles into ruthlessness, effectiveness, the roar of a storm made a beam of piercing light.

She is no longer a woman at all but a weapon, and she will turn her blade on her husband in time.

For years now, the thought of revenge has been the rhythm of her footfall, the shadow hounding at her heels. It's kept her sharp through the aftershocks of her husband's betrayal, her own unexpected grief.

It's kept her alive, even when she feels like a dead thing already, as though her soul winged its way from her chest even as her body clung desperately to life.

If only it had taken her memories with it.

If she's been cruel, he's been crueller. He favoured his brother over his wife, his brother whom he didn't even _like_. He refused to hear her, even see her; closed himself off to any truth that might not fit his convenient narrative of her devilry.

It was her favourite tree he hanged her from, she doubts he told d'Artagnan _that_. Two hundred acres at his disposal, and it was the one place on that vast, lonely estate she was ever herself that he chose to bring her down.

It had to burn after that, just as their home had. She hopes he was watching as she set the dry grass ablaze, flames scaling the trunk, smoke rising to oblivious heaven as sparks jumped from every igniting leaf.

She'd wanted to burn everything: the both of them, from the inside out. She was wild that night, and if d'Artagnan hadn't come she might have done it, held Olivier in her arms again at last as the flames devoured them both. She imagines it as an undoing, a healing: searing away their union's slow blight and decay, leaving only a moment of bright promise, and their hands entwined.

But she's fooling herself; that's never how it was. Theirs was no ideal union, no crowning moment of perfect understanding between them. Instead she married a beautiful stranger, and he turned from her – not when he learned of her past, or even when his brother died at her hand, but when she began to know him.

It's ironic that what caused him to spurn her is her only true talent, that raised her above the level of the common criminal. Of far greater value than mere light-fingeredness or seductiveness is her instinctive understanding of other people. Knowing exactly where the hidden levers lie, and when to push.

She understood what her beloved husband felt almost before he did; saw the way he looked at the more handsome of the servants, the young nobles of his acquaintance, for what it was. Fear – and longing.

The way he looks at d'Artagnan now, when he thinks nobody sees.

He was inside her the first time she gave her observation voice; and she remembers every detail in the way he stared at her, the colour draining from his face, before recoiling, running from the room like a child, leaving her cold and unfulfilled.

She saw him riding over the fields not five minutes later.

He did not return for another two days.

As she sat beneath her favourite tree, hugging her knees and not caring that she was shivering, she realised the magnitude of what she'd done had scared her too. The first threads of doubt seeping into her bones, cold as an afternoon turned to evening.

 _No_ , there was no place for remorse, she told herself fiercely, not when it was already done. She had struck at the heart of him, she saw that now; and he must accept her place there, whatever it took.

They were one soul in two bodies, that's what she'd thought.

He hadn't even kissed her until they were wed.

What is love, if not that?

He'd made her a vow, and he broke it. He betrayed her, and so made her everything she is. It was all his fault – _his_ desires, his rejection of her, so ill-deserved – and when she destroys him at last, he will look into her eyes for the final time and know he brought it all on himself.

That time of reckoning is drawing closer; and she is almost set for her final triumph, the culmination of everything she's worked towards for so long. But though there are still moves to be made, plans to put in place, she's growing dangerously impatient; tossing and turning whenever she tries to rest, half-consumed with the desire just to go to him again, as strong even as in the first days following her fall from grace.

She wants him, and she wants to hurt him; and the two impulses have become one and the same.

 _Soon_ , she promises herself, hugging her knees to her chest as if to hold her pleasure inside, the way her shutters resist the morning light. Soon the time will come to lay her hands on the hairline fracture between ersatz father and son, to drive her blade there, and cleave them apart.

Soon she'll tell her husband that she's already had the man he desires.

Her first plan, the one she will use, has been ready for weeks. She knows exactly what she'll say, how she'd counter every possible move. But past and present blur in her mind as desire brews a storm in her chest; and her waking dreams are filled with images that are both memory and fantasy at once.

She imagines herself sitting up against the headboard with Olivier kneeling between her legs, leaning back against her, naked. His face pressed into her neck, expression twisted and eyes screwed shut, body betrayed by the hard cock curving beautifully out before him.

She would put one hand upon his throat as she stroked him with the other, torturously slow, as she told him everything d'Artagnan did to her in his room at the inn. His youthful ardour as he kissed her, pulling impatiently at her clothes; mouthing worshipfully at her breasts as she sat astride him, rubbing her soaking wet sex along the hard length of his cock.

 _Imagine it, love_ , she'd say, increasing the pressure of thumb and finger either side of his Adam's apple as she let her most sultry tones drip into his ear. _D'Artagnan's cock. So long and slender, rather like yours, but nut-brown as his skin, straight as an arrow. Imagine if you could touch that – your hand sliding the soft skin back and forth along that stiff core, feeling every inch of it, driving him wild._

 _No_ , he'd whisper, as he always had; _no, no, no,_ over and over into her neck, as if hating what he wanted could stop him wanting it, could stop her coming to him and laying him bare; and she'd tell him to imagine d'Artagnan's wide-eyed wonder as he undressed him, the reverence with which he'd take his cock into his mouth, ignoring all Olivier's pleas – _please, please Anne, let me, please –_ until she felt the tears start to fall.

Then she'd turn his head, kiss his wet eyes and say _yes, yes._

She doesn't know how many men she's had in her life; more than is worth considering, and few of them worth the consideration. They had all wanted something of her, and taken it.

Olivier had been the first to give her something of himself; and right from the start she was addicted.

She'd slowly made it an art: learned exactly how far she could push him, stroking him, taking him inside her as she asked for the names of the young men he desired, what exactly he'd want them to do to each other, in explicit detail. It hadn't mattered that he could never bear to say; she'd always have suggestions of her own to murmur into his ear as she took him over the edge, all the filthy words that he never asked her how she knew.

Even when they were apart, when he refused to come to her, she'd wanted more. She couldn't read Latin or Greek, but she'd found the most well-thumbed books in his library, hidden unobtrusively on the high shelves; and an hour or so with a dictionary would tell her enough to know if they were what she sought.

Then she'd take a single flower from the garden and press it between the pages.

She hadn't realised how she must have made him feel until it was too late.

 _Fuck how_ he'd _felt_ , she thinks violently, pushing the sudden guilt away; he had had no idea how _she'd_ felt, living an alien life. Better she'd stayed a petty thief, a honey trap, an assassin – none had been so difficult as being his wife.

Learning to be Anne de Breuil, then Anne de la Fère, the sweet and innocent parson's sister, who had come from nowhere at all. Married to a man who was retiring and not fond of society, with no knowledge of managing an estate or genteel pastimes of her own, who would have been more comfortable among the servants than as their mistress.

She was bored, then – bored by her position, and chafing under the press of all the secrets she kept; the only thing that held her interest was her husband, and his secret shames.

No wonder, then, that she should seek to know him so completely, the only way she understood: as a thief with a mark. Strategising, calculating, tricking her way into his heart.

She'd learned to love him by it; and he to hate her.

And much too late, it's clear that everything that followed was an excuse for the fact that he already wanted rid of her.

And yet she has seen him, watched him, and he is no freer now than she is.

Is it such a stretch, then, to imagine what they could have had together if they'd ever really had a chance, if he'd ever let her in?

She could have given him so much.

She could have given him d'Artagnan.

She's watched d'Artagnan too: she's seen how he looks at the man who is still her husband, and she wonders what they would be like together. Olivier has been lonely for years; he surely wouldn't be able to say no to such youth and beauty, such guileless, uncomplicated passion.

Not if d'Artagnan stood before him and offered himself, explicitly.

She imagines them, back in their marital bed; d'Artagnan standing by the side, taut as a bowstring, his cock an arrow ready for the firing. The firelight glints off her token where it lies round his neck, matching the one Olivier wears even now. Both of them waiting for her permission, her guidance.

There are so many ways she could play it, and she can't decide which would be the sweetest. To have d'Artagnan watch them, his dark eyes on Olivier's burning cheeks as he holds himself on hands and knees, while she fucks him open with her fingers, promising that if he's good enough this will be d'Artagnan's cock. The sight of the man he desires, naked and aroused, overwhelming him –

– then she lies beneath him and kisses the tears from his cheeks as d'Artagnan fills him to the hilt.

Or she could make Olivier watch, forbidden to touch them or himself, commanded to look her in the face as d'Artagnan reaches a hand between her legs. She'd tell Olivier that d'Artagnan isn't like him, only desires the touch of a woman – it could be the most blatant of lies and she knows it would still work, hit right in the unguarded heart of him; because he believes it already, that nobody else could be cursed as he is.

Or both her men could pleasure her at once, turning her back and forth between them. Forbidden to touch each other, working her desperately; convinced that if they're good enough for her then she'll give them what they crave.

But what she longs for above all else is Olivier kneeling, leaning back against her, the words she'd whisper in his ear as he watches d'Artagnan touch himself, a mirror of her husband, and so pretty in the candlelight.

_Corrupt. Perverted. Shameful._

She'd stroke Olivier's cock with every word – or even better, tell him to stroke himself, as he shook with fear. She'd ask him how it felt; and he'd whisper half-formed words, mumble into her neck until she says _louder, louder, so he can hear you_ – and then he'd crack, shuddering and choking on empty sounds, and sob against her as he came –

She sits upright, watches a thin line of light through the crack of the shutters, suddenly wide awake.

**Author's Note:**

> Works inspired by this one: [fanart by sevenswells](http://sevenswells.tumblr.com/post/86826072957/athos-milady-dedicated-to-breathtaken-as-a)


End file.
